Conclusions and recommendations
Part 1: Matching decision-making capacity to the
number of applications
1. Departments should compare the additional
administrative costs of resourcing to meet surges in demand, with
the additional programme and other costs which will arise if backlogs
are allowed to accumulate.
The National Audit Office estimated that up to £500 million
might have been saved if the Home Office had been able to put
in place sufficient staff and infrastructure to meet the significant
rise in asylum applications in 1999 and 2000. Instead, backlogs
of applications accumulated, increasing support and accommodation
costs paid to the applicants and their families while decisions
were awaited, and making the removal of unsuccessful claimants
more difficult.
2. Departments also need to consider the end
to end impact on delivery chains of tackling major shifts in demand
for services. The Home Office's decision
to move caseworkers from deciding applications to work on removing
failed asylum seekers helped to increase the number of removals,
but impacted adversely on the clearance of the application backlog.
While some £50 million was saved by increasing removals,
the National Audit Office estimated that the impact on the backlog
of applications may have cost some £200 million of the overall
£500 million potential savings forgone.
3. The Treasury should be sensitive to the
risk of administrative cost limits inhibiting timely action to
save programme expenditure, especially
where the costs fall on one Department and the potential savings
on another. There may be an "invest to save" case to
avoid significant backlogs accumulating at points in the delivery
chain, increasing programme costs because administrative costs
are capped.
Part 2: Improving the timeliness of decision making
4. The Department should look to expand its
fast track procedures, drawing on its experiences at Harmondsworth
and Oakington and on those of other countries such as the Netherlands.
At Harmondsworth, the initial decision and appeal stages currently
take three and four days respectively. In the Netherlands, some
40% of asylum applications are handled through fast track processes
taking around 7 working days, whereas only 9% of cases are fast
tracked in the United Kingdom.
5. The Department for Constitutional Affairs
should consider whether a more demanding joint target could be
set to improve the Appellate Authority's speed in handling appeals,
and hence reducing costs for the taxpayer in supporting asylum
seekers until their appeal is determined. The Directorate and
Appellate Authority had a joint target for 2003-04 to clear 60%
of all applications within six months. Almost half of all applications,
however, did not proceed to the appeal stage and therefore only
a small proportion needed to be cleared quickly through the appeal
stage for the target to be met.
6. Cases not dealt with through the fast track
process have a target of 61 days for a decision even though on
average a caseworker spends only some nine hours on the case to
reach a decision. Whilst recognising that
applicants need time to prepare their case, the Home Office should
seek to shorten elapsed times by reducing the time taken to fix
an interview and despatch decisions, and by drawing on processes
employed in its fast track centres.
Part 3: Improving the quality of decision making
7. Over the last five years, the proportion
of appeals allowed has consistently exceeded the Directorate's
target of 15%, and has
frequently exceeded 20%. The appeals allowed rate has also varied
significantly for applicants from different countries. The Directorate
should examine why appeals are upheld, particularly amongst nationalities
where appeal allowed rates are highest, and disseminate the lessons
for improved decision-making to its caseworkers.
8. In 2003, applications for asylum were received
from some 146 different nationalities, placing a significant burden
on caseworkers in understanding the country circumstances,
especially as these can be localised within a particular country.
The Home Office should expand, beyond more senior staff, the number
of caseworkers with expertise on particular countries or regions
of the world to improve the quality and consistency of its decision-making.
9. The cost of legal aid for asylum applicants
in the United Kingdom is expected to be £146 million in 2004-05,
and accounts for example for 30% of the cost of the initial decision
stage. The Department for Constitutional
Affairs reported that it had not compared the cost of legal aid
with that of other countries. It should act to fill this gap in
its knowledge.
10. The Directorate has put in place procedures
to detect possible multiple applications, but has not always acted
promptly to investigate concerns raised by third parties about
potentially fraudulent claims. Amongst
a sample of 65 backlog cases examined by the National Audit Office,
four contained evidence from third parties that the claims could
be fraudulent but no action had been taken. There should be a
clear contact point within the Directorate for whistleblowers
and for following up information received, and robust procedures
for acting upon likely cases of fraud.
| 
